This Review is an excerpt from my recently-published List of the Thirty-Five Best Games I Played in 2023, so if this strikes a chord, there's more where that came from!

Now...On with the Show!!

As the sort of guy who spends his nights mulling over weird Pasts and Bad Futures, Sonic CD’s gameplay fantasia is a gift. The dream of loop-de-looping into ancient history, nipping the seeds of evil in the bud, and returning to find a kinder, more harmonious world…that’s something I think we all deserve to have at least once in our lives.

The Past

I’ve heard it said that those who played Sonic the Hedgehog games as children, because of their lack of money and therefore choice, persevered past their learning curves. They, unlike so many detractors, didn’t write them off for their quirks, didn’t fling them back in the bin for failing to immediately satisfy their need for speed. Well, not me. The “classic” Sonic games were some of my first, thanks to the Mega Collection on GameCube. I fell for every beginner’s trap, failed every skill check, ran out of lives and went back to Lego Star Wars. They did not survive the purge.

But I’ll give Sonic credit, he’s more patient than his idle animation would suggest. Waited the decade it took for Mania to teach me how it’s done. You can’t enjoy a Sonic the way you might a Mario. These aren’t games about charging forward through obstacles – asserting your presence with power-ups and projectiles – but going with the flow, allowing the geometry to carry you where it will, dexterously reacting to keep the ride going. The challenge of harmonizing with progressively jagged, unfriendly zones is not just the point, it’s the joy. After that, Sonic 3 & Knuckles became my favorite, and I figured that was just about the end of that. In 2017, I concluded that the highs of Sonic’s dynamic movement are fantastic, but it’s dependent on the strength of its level design, and those lows are just distracting enough to take it down a peg. An ideal Sonic playthrough occurs as a single unbroken thought, and a big enough blunder can compromise the current.

Fans will tell you that 3 and Mania represent the series’ most successful “balance” of forward momentum and exploration. I bought that; it’s the reason I prioritized those games. Here’s the thing. Why burden either one of these goals with the needs of the other? If the issue is that these level designs become unfocused, draw themselves out, fail to wholly satisfy either inclination…well, why not have one built entirely around speed, and another based on explor– OH WAIT THEY DID??

The Present

Last year, I called Mario World a great alternative sequel to Super Mario Bros. 3. Today, I’m crowning Sonic 2 its true successor. I play Mario 3 for the action, for its perfect jump and P-speed antics, and Sonic 2 takes that premise even further – a character whose movement is determined by his relationship to the environment. Even conceptually, Sonic's mechanical direction is inspired. Where 1 didn’t have the know-how to play to its strengths, and my previous favorites interrupted themselves with major gimmicks and a needless mess of boss fights, Sonic 2 is confident in the power of its physics – rolling through concise multi-tiered stages, darting from start to finish without a moment wasted. It's endlessly responsive to experimentation, filled with hidden shortcuts and dynamic skips. I spent ages fiddling around with a loop near the end of Chemical Plant Act 1, being sure to keep Sonic on his feet to better control his trajectory, taking off at just the right angle, through a one-way gate, to finish the stage in under twenty-five seconds. The thrill of tearing through the high route in Aquatic Ruin and Mystic Cave, of picking up speed shoes to launch high above Wing Fortress, bouncing off of a suspended monitor and landing DIRECTLY in front of the boss, is priceless. Emerald Hill Zone’s opening riff doesn’t get enough love, it’s up there with DaiOuJou in its ability to hook me in from frame one. Appropriately, it's as close to an OutRun-like physics platformer as we’ve ever had. It's one of the greats because every frame of its forty-five minute run fizzles with potential energy. Ignore the Emeralds and go.

But friends, I had played Sonic the Hedgehog 2 before the year 2023. My love for it has grown to ridiculous size (Thanks in no small part to Sonic 2 Absolute), but I've respected it for some time. Even finished it. This is not a review of Sonic 2.

How ‘bout I take you down to Quartz Quadrant.

The Good Future

Sonic CD shares 2’s place at the top of the heap. Given its reputation, I could not believe how well it clicked. Overly wide, exploratory level design in action games isn’t my thing, but here, it’s less a matter of “exploring” for a number of key objects, and more about enjoying the breadth of what Sonic’s physics are capable of – shooting through massive cascading loops and rebounding up and around towering, dreamlike worlds. Coming off the heels of the first game, with an entirely separate team from Sonic 2, it’s ridiculously forward-thinking. CD preempts the conceit of Mario 64’s 3D game design by a whole three years during an age when every year played host to wild innovation across the medium. It celebrates Sonic's unique movement mechanics like nothing before or since.

I called a perfect Sonic playthrough “unbroken,” but I didn’t say “fast.” Whether you’re flying high or barreling through badniks, movement is its own reward. And while that would’ve been enough for me to give it the thumbs-up, CD does not rest on those laurels. Hit a signpost and maintain top speed, and you’ll time travel between any of three eras of the same stage. Must be the best take on Mario 3’s P-Meter there’s ever been. Smash a robot generator in the past, and you’ve earned a wonderland of a future. Hunting generators is the way the game is designed to be played, and I refuse to ever run the game without them. Beyond the fact that they encourage the intended playstyle, the consequence for failure is too tangible, too well-executed to ignore.

I have to wonder if there was a kid in 1993 whose immediate inclination was to have Sonic go to the future. When this child finally managed to do this, the coolest thing they could possibly imagine being able to accomplish in any game – Making Sonic the Hedgehog Time Travel into The Future – they wound up in an apocalyptic hellscape. The Bad Future so starkly different, so loud and raucous, that it almost feels like a joke. The stakes are clear; Sega put in the work to make you want to care about the world you're trying to save, if only to find out how great the Good Future's music must be. It'd be sick enough to have this two years ahead of Chrono Trigger, but even now, I can't think of another action platformer that attempts anything like this.

And don’t believe what they tell you, there are no bad Zones (Wacky Workbench is fun, I promise). I could swear the Japanese Soundtrack makes its already vibrant colors even more evocative. It’s exactly as complex as any game in this series should be. Its opening cutscene is everything to which Sonic should ever have aspired.

The Bad Future

Another 2D Sonic game released in 2023. We don’t have to talk about that one.

Nintendo's last true arcade title. Not like, literally a game made for arcades, but in terms of design. It's no secret that I basically don't like anything Nintendo has put out in almost 20 years at this point. The easiest answer for why is that their new titles are very safe, chaste, inbred games with few new ideas. This isn't to say their new stuff is strictly bad, far from it. There's still a competency somewhere there. It's kind of like the best playing garbage ever though. What defines modern Nintendo games is mainly the lack of any sort of design that approximates 'something.' What I mean is that it's all self-referential to what 'games' collectively are, and what Nintendo games used to be, rather than just simply being fun games with an identity that isn't so tautological. I ponder over this because DKJB has a lot of those 'square-hole' style ideas that went on to plague more modern entries; Being a sort of precursor to Mario Galaxy, by staff and design motivations. Yet this is one of the only modern Nintendo games where the design isn't frustratingly patronizing.

Arcade game design had you fit very dense encounter variety back to back into your games. The nature necessitated it. Time was literally money, but it was also a good way of keeping a game fresh in the eyes of venue frequenters. There were all kinds of flashy games, which due to primitive tech, had to come up with unique ways of executing a usually simple idea. Back then, there weren't many standards in place, so a game more naturally became what it wanted to be. Putting it super succinctly so we aren't here all day: Back then arcade games were inherently more engaging because the concept had to be front and center, and that 'flashiness' was delivered through gameplay density. Donkey Kong Jungle Beat is a sidescrolling score attack game with a lot of ideas. From callbacks to the original Donkey Kong game with the logo font; To the barrel graze jingle, this game's explicitly introspective on the nature of arcade games. I see that even in how it controls. Just 3 inputs, Left, Right, and the 'Clap', which can be triggered by tapping the side of the bongos too. The somatosensory element of the controls are complemented by the frantic nature of the game as well. It can be very difficult to keep most combos going, and when DK grabs hold of enemies he beats the ever living daylights out of them. I'm pretty sure it was so violent it forced the ESRB to make E10+ because they didn't want this game to be rated T.

There's even an arcade game it actually closely resembles, in spirit and operation. Mach Breakers: Numan Athletics 2. A game about a superhuman decathlon. Mach Breakers also only has 3 inputs, insane mashing that really makes you FEEL the action of your characters, and above all extremely arcadey. I draw this comparison because there's even more DKJB could be paying homage to, that I may not be fully aware of because it's not exclusionary in that way. It's not some reference that exists solely for it's own value. It's kind of a more natural one, that I'm sure began during development as a coincidence and then they leaned into it as a genuine inspiration. I haven't even gone into the scoring system yet, which I find very interesting and well designed. Everytime DK does a unique action, such as backflipping, wall jumping, swinging, sliding up onto a ledge, etc; It adds to a combo trick meter. The combo stays going as long as you're in the air, unless you get hit. The combo counter acts as a multiplier for each individual instance of a banana you collect. Which bunches being their own multiple of 3. Additionally, when you grab many stray bananas at the same time using the clap motion it adds an additional amount by 1 per banana you caught. There's a lot they do with this. With all the unique enemy and banana layouts, it adds a lot of strategy to routing particular areas, without turning it into a chore necessarily. Because there's a lot of freeform stuff you can just try and do in the moment.

Not a whole lot of the game is up to scripted events. Even though you'd think there'd be a reason to add many of them because of the game's limited controls, the game uses them sparingly. Even when you grab a melon that was thrown at you as a projectile, there's still a chance it can miss when hit back because of poor positioning. But like, also, it has physics that do matter when being juggled by the claps soundwave. The game plays out mostly setpiece to setpiece, and the 'breaks' are still fraught with heavy mashing. It's a very involved game, but I love it for that.

I've scarcely felt so undecided on a game, this is genuinely an oddball experience. This is basically a retelling of Evangelion but in game form. The cutscenes and sound have incredible quality, but actually playing it - crazy shit. The first couple of stages set you up to think this is a 3D fighter as you control Eva 01 and fight angels, but just as soon as you get used to that, you're slapped in the face by an 8 second mission where you're fighting with the controls trying to aim a missile. Then you're mashing buttons hard enough to give yourself an aneurysm as you chase down Jet Alone - and then its a fucking rhythm game with Asuka. Your head will be spinning, but not for long, because you can clear this entire thing in like an hour. Is it even fair to call this a game? It feels more like something you'd play with at a museum exhibit

A game I was done with a good 15 hours before it was finished and which I've only become more done with the more time that passes. Absolutely at its best when it's acting as a non-stop comedy adventure flying between wildly incongruous tones in this goofy road-trip cat-and-mouse chase. The characters? Charming! The jokes? Funny! The thrills? You better believe they're thrilling! Unimpeachable combat and constant amusement park minigame switching makes for a cotton candy delight that borders on transcendent and at moments had me convinced it was the best game ever.

Problem with cotton candy though is that you put it in water and realize: oh it's actually nothing. Rebirth is packed to the gills and yet completely empty, gutting the original's story for sophomoric multiverse shenanigans that flatten any emotional or thematic depth. Worse, the game is too scared to actually do anything with the new ideas it does have, constantly pulling back at even the slightest glimpse of genuine intrigue until the entire game is rendered a purgatory of non-movement. Nothing happens! Please let something happen!! The dungeons are a bore and just about every other event is so blatantly shoehorned in to fill for time that even if you ignore sidequests and mainline this thing, the pace is genuinely baaaaad. Just the most "too much" game I've ever played, maybe.

So yeah, loved it at points, gave me a dull headache at others, and is spoiling like milk in my brain. (Yuffie great tho--they did justice to my girl)

I can barely form a coherent thought about what I just finished but I feel weirdly seen by Final Fantasy VIII and its protagonist in particular as this understanding of specific feelings of capitalist alienation that I've been unable to articulate for the longest time. I don't have any official diagnosis and especially do not want people I barely know armchair diagnosing me online but Squall's struggles to process the most basic social interactions in terms of anything other than capitalist obligations like school or work, "shut up and get the job done" mentality, and specific jaded outlook are core parts of myself I never expected to see reflected in this fashion. While I narrowly prefer the basic bitch choices of VI and VII in terms of Final Fantasy games, this surreal response to the cultural zeitgeist of the latter game and weird as fuck (complimentary) use of Marxist theory (specifically the "annihilation of space by time" described in Grundrisse and expanded upon over a century later by David Harvey) in the same way that most RPGs use religious/mythological concepts solely because it sounds cool is a game that will no doubt have a special place in my heart from now on.

they don't make them like this anymore, man. everything about final fantasy x bleeds unfettered confidence and an uncontrollable optimism for games as a medium of art and entertainment alike; not only did kitase and his posse clearly believe video games could Be More but they were doing everything in their power to make those dreams corporeal, to make the future of games become a "here and now" rather than some distant aspiration that video games could one day hope to touch. it's really funny how hallmark western titles like braid or the last of us that would come in the ballpark of a decade later were lauded as "games finally being art," or kojima's insistent and insensitive portrayals of sexual assault in metal gear solid v to apparently "validate" games as art suggest an insecurity in the form, a need to prove itself, when squaresoft in their prime knew games were something special and were putting in all the legwork they could to make people see that and had been doing that since the eighties.

though i treasure final fantasy xvi, i can't help but look at it as having fallen to the same insecurity i alluded to in the aforementioned western titles - which makes ffx's confidence in itself and celebration of its own achievements all the more commanding of respect and admiration. yoshi-p wanted a return to a more conventional fantasy setting so he neutered a lot of the whimsy and off-the-wall wackiness from final fantasy for a grim-and-grisly dark fantasy setting inspired by the hot-button fantasy stories of the era such as game of thrones and god of war. what did kitase do whenever his fanbase demanded a return to a traditional european fantasy setting? he acted in direct defiance of that and instead looked to the folklore, customs, cultures and traditions of east and southeast asia (in particular okinawa) and started from the ground up, sculpting every aspect of the game to make something unlike anything final fantasy had ever seen or would ever see again. that even bleeds into its storytelling - sure, final fantasy x gets a lot of flak as the "goofy" one due to tidus's infamous laugh (fuck you it's one of the best romance scenes in all of final fantasy) or its loud-and-proud nature as a product of the turn of the millenia, but i think this is probably final fantasy's most gripping and eloquent political narrative... even and especially in comparison to the more "serious" political final fantasy games such as tactics, xii and (again) xvi. while a lot of political narratives in jrpgs tend to more broadly broach abstract ideas about classism, imperialism and war, final fantasy x's politics are rooted firmly in okinawa's historical relationship with mainland japan and the ties therein with institutional religion in modern-day japan. it's an aggressively japanese game in just about every manner, to the point where i can't help but wonder if there's a tie between ffx being the laughingstock of the series in the mid-to-late 00s and the really racist hatred of japanese games in the west during the seventh console gen... hmm

speaking of the seventh gen and onward it feels like every single way that developers try to flex the power of their hardware and their grasp over it is just graphics, graphics, graphics, to the point where we're getting diminishing returns and the games just flatly don't look all that great because they're bereft of visual direction and identity. i'm not really gonna do much talking about x's graphics (although this is STILL probably one of the best-looking ps2 games, especially those fmvs - oh my god!)... again, compensating for something, forgetting what makes games what they are. like yeah, games are a medium of art capable of conveying powerful messages and emotions like any other medium, but games are fun too! and man, what a better way to flex the capabilities of the recently-launched playstation 2 by making final fantasy x a GAME's game on top of all the shit it has to say as a story. there's so much shit to do in this game, man. it seems like every other nook and cranny has some minigame, sidequest or post-game content for you to sink your teeth into, squaresoft just packing all this random bullshit into this game because they COULD. like fuck, did you know there's a butterfly hunting minigame in the macalania lake? i sure as hell didn't until this playthrough!

i can't help but mourn what games have become and the state of the industry over the past decade and some change. square enix is a shell of its former self between its unbelievably slimy business practices and the increasingly-cynical nature of its output and middling quality of its games. final fantasy x seems like a relic of a bygone era that we can never return to, a reminder of better times, and a testament to the potential that video games in the AAA sphere have broadly failed to live up to.

but - true to the game's main message - final fantasy x also acts as a reminder of what games can be, what we can hope for and expect out of games, and a reminder that games are not inherently as rotten as the industry nowadays would lead you to believe. who knows? i certainly don't, but i also don't want to just give up and accept the stagnation that games have broadly been reduced to, or resign myself that this spiral of cynical corporate product-pushing is all that there is.

and i don't have to, really. the glory days of the aaa sphere might be over, but making games (and sharing them) is easier than ever. the titans of tomorrow are getting their start now with nothing more than their passion for the medium and a desire to connect with people whose passion matches theirs. ultimately, that's what brings people together to begin with: shared convictions, shared faith, shared ideals and shared love for their favorite things in the world.

and when that love brings people together and unites them in a common belief, thus enabling them to exert their will upon the world at whatever scale their numbers and determination allow for... things change. isn't it wonderful?

One of the most beautiful and well-written games I've played in my life. Genuine tears were streaming down my face when I finished the epilogue. I haven't played many point-and-click adventure games: only the ones by Humongous Entertainment and Sam & Max, so randomly picking up this game that was super cheap during the steam sale and having it be one of the best pieces of media I've experienced in my life was an insanely pleasant surprise.

The Longest Journey, without going into too many spoilers, is a story about April Ryan, and her connection between the two worlds: Stark (the world of science and law) and Arcadia (the world of magic and chaos). Throughout the story, through April, you travel and experience the struggles of abuse, political censorship, and if war can ever truly be "just". You meet strange people, animals, and mystical creatures that help you along your journey to help reconnect the seperated worlds. Every character is so well thought-out and truly personal, it feels like you're properly meeting someone who has gone through so much in life, their skin moist with the sweat of real fears and missed dreams. Something personal to me that I really enjoyed was the crazy amount of strongly written female characters, ranging from our relatable but brave girl protag, to the realistic and openly accepted lesbian couple, to the old women whose tales we must trust more than our own self. I appreciate that the serious times of the game are allowed their moments, while also having many silly moments that know when to be separate. I went in expecting to hate Crow, as an example, but you don't see him too often for him to become annoying, and when you do see him, it feels like a breath of fresh air to hear his dumb, silly banter. The story is set up perfectly, and clearly had a lot of time and love put into it, with it being absolutely perfectly paced, and one of the better examples of using the Chekhov's Gun trope that I can think of.

My compliants are small, and just involve stuff that old point-and-clicks almost always do, such as having a couple confusing puzzles or actions to continue the story, but for a point-and-click as long and complicated as The Longest Journey I was pretty shocked how few "dead-ends" I ran into. The game also crashed a bit, but I guess it's to be expected when running an older PC game on a modern computer, and I mostly only really had issues with crashes when it didn't mix well with OBS.

The Longest Journey is $3 during the Steam sale - I've already bought and gifted it to 5 of my friends, begging them to put time aside and play this game. It's not going to be a game that touches everyone as emotionally as it touched me, but if you have $3 lying around and 25+ hours to spend, please please give it a chance...

This is the story of the Longest Journey, and I told it in my own words, as told to me by my teacher. As we will continue to tell for many, many years.

5/5

The prose of Ecco and the same sensation of taking realistic animal controls through a vivid and surrealist world, now bound to a hummingbird with gameplay more akin to the Amiga shmup scene - Apidya and Agony come to mind. There's a lot of clash in the visuals and audio, they use a lot of stock effects for the bullets that I swear I heard in stuff as loony as Backyard Baseball, but I'd say the panoramic art direction still wins out; Jenny and I were comparing it to some hallway paintings in our family's houses, the really detailed watercolors of flowers and pollinating fauna. Very odd soundtrack for a 32X game too, it feels like they're using the PCM for full instrument samples instead of just drums - very SNES-like.

The struggle comes from the divide between the strictness of its shmup design and the unruliness of the controls. There's lots of odd quirks and movement influxes that occur with the slightest tap in an attempt to replicate the buzzing movement of real hummingbirds. With such limited health, it's all too common to make one wrong tap and run right into a bullet. Bad hitboxes exacerbate this further. Really is a 'have your cake and eat it situation', can't commit to phenomenalism and make an idealized shooter.

It was worth experiencing for its artistic and historical significance but I don't anticipate myself returning to it soon. Shmup Junkie was on some shit for putting this in that shmup list of his.

what i love about final fantasy 13 is it's domesticity. it's a story about siblings and parents and children, first fundamentally between it's human characters and then extended allegorically to the relationship between state and subject, god and mortal, creator and creation. this makes for really compelling melodrama in the sort of Hollywood-anime syncretic sense that square strives for while still simultaneously working within the framework of the "jrpg" as an aesthetic mode and being quietly subversive of its tropes of chosen heroes and selfish villainous divinity that final fantasy as a series has dabbled in effectively since FF4 but most pronounced in games like 7 and 10. to kill god is to disobey your parents (and to reject the values instilled into you by the state).

13-2 kind of throws that all away for a much more macro scale narrative. i hated this at first, I paused my playthrough three years ago when Lightning became a champion of a goddess existing beyond time, when what I love about her is that she's Claire Farron, a chuunibyou beat cop at a beach resort town who dooms the world because she hates her future brother-in-law. but after playing type-0 I wanted more fabula nova crystalis and this time, I accepted this game for what it is striving for and was able to enjoy it. but i reject the notion that this is holistically better than FF13, either in narrative or systems. i don't feel like i can put together a cohesive view of the game until I play lightning returns however. so maybe I'll elaborate on why another three years from now.

The "New" was only ever entirely literal: disappointingly, that subseries was essentially a Mario highlight reel rather than anything actually new. Of course, novelty isn't tantamount to quality, but it often feels like Nintendo's only strength as a developer in the modern age is their willingness to experiment. We'll never see another first-party Nintendo game that's not painfully easy and overtutorialized, or one that pushes its mechanics and is at all willing to punish you, or even one that feels mysterious, but buy a Nintendo console and you'll still always end up with a handful of exclusives that are at least fresh conceptually. Just... without "Mario" in any of their titles. Galaxy is far from my favorite Mario game, but it's the most recent one that actually felt like something new, which is concerning considering that it released when most of this site's userbase was still in diapers. We're in the mid 2020s now and traditional, lives-and-continues-based 2D platformers are basically dead and buried, but here comes Super Mario Bros. Wonder with what seems to be a singular, concentrated effort to be new and not just New. You can turn into an elephant in this one!

Unfortunately, though, the elephant powerup is even more emblematic of the entire game than anyone could've anticipated. It looks completely unique to Mario, and, I guess, technically, it is, as he's never had an upgrade that requires him to reload his projectiles before, but does it actually change the gameplay in any meaningful capacity? No. It's just another way to break blocks and attack enemies horizontally. The whole game is preoccupied with appearing new instead of actually being new, and, I mean, it succeeded in this regard, considering I actually bought it after skipping both New Super Mario Bros. U and Bowser's Fury. Wonder flowers feel less like a central gameplay hook and more like short bonus sections that are part of already minuscule levels. The only way they were ever gonna work from a mechanical perspective was if they all happened during high-pressure situations and forced you to adapt to unpredictable twists on the fly (although that would just be a rehash of Wario Land 4) and the only way they were ever gonna work from a spectacle perspective was if they actually went all in. For every wonder section that genuinely took me by surprise- switching the point-of-view to top-down or putting me in outer space or making Mario really, really tall- there'd be five that would just turn the level into an autoscroller, or just make the enemies bigger, or just move the geometry around more than usual. Too often, it's weird in the same way that Mario Land 2 is weird: visually, and that's it. Ultimately, it's far prettier than the New Super Mario Bros. games, but it's no less bland.

And outside of the wonder sections, there really just isn’t all that much to talk about. The badge system makes Mario’s moveset loose and flexible akin to something like Yoshi’s Island, but it’s missing the level variety and mechanical experimentation that made that game work. A few stages have bonus exits, but they lack any of Super Mario World’s pseudo-puzzle solving or sense of mystery. What’s left? The fact that it has a handful of decent stage-specific mechanics? (All of the other New games do, too.) Those one-screen puzzle levels? (Didn’t care for them in Mario Maker, still don’t here.) The weird, Dark Souls-ass asynchronous co-op? (I refuse to pay for Nintendo’s online service, so I can’t comment.) How every individual world feels like its own little adventure? (Alright, I admit it, I liked this one.) If you’re not going to be new, you could at least be cohesive- I’m a big fan of both 3D World and Odyssey, but I’d hesitate to call either of them particularly revolutionary, instead focusing on being a conduit for co-op shenanigans and a modernization of Mario 64’s mechanics, respectively. Besides being bright and colorful, is there a similar underlying summary that you could apply to Wonder? More and more, it feels like Mario is becoming Kirby: not striving for anything beyond a vaguely pleasant experience and producing no bad games, but no great ones either. Maybe my standards are just too high- after all, we don't expect Star Wars or The Simpsons or Halloween to be cutting-edge anymore, even though they were at one point, so why should we Mario? But, in 2024, this franchise is unrecognizable from the one that gave us 3's level map and World's secret exits and 64's moveset. And that just saddens me more than anything else.